Letters to the Editor

College-in-High-School Laws: Minnesota's Preceded Idaho's

To the Editor:

Congratulations to Idaho for giving its high school students
more high-quality options ("Idaho To Allow High Schoolers To Attend
College Full Time," April 2, 1997). But I was surprised to
read that Education Week believes Idaho was the first
state "to pass legislation explicitly allowing high school
students to attend college on a full-time basis."

In 1985, Minnesota adopted legislation permitting high school
students to attend two- or four-year colleges and universities, full or
part time, with state funds following students, paying all tuition,
laboratory, and book fees. Our postsecondary-option law allows
families, rather than school boards, to decide whether students are
ready to take college courses. That makes it different from other
states', whose earlier laws had given this decision to the
district.

Since the enactment of this law, about 75,000 students have used
this great learning opportunity. Equally important, the postsecondary
option has helped stimulate broad school system improvement. A study
last year by the Minnesota legislative auditor found that more than
half of the high school principals responding said that the law helped
produce more collaboration between high schools and colleges. And the
number of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses
offered in state high schools has increased significantly since the law
was passed.

I was also surprised to read in your pages a Commentary praising
high standards, yet criticizing charter schools. Minnesota passed the
nation's first charter school law in 1991. We are finding that these
ideas complement each other. There is bipartisan support for the
charter school movement, as there is for increasing standards and
combining classroom work with service to help make academics more
meaningful.

There is no silver bullet. A combination of strong strategies will
improve student achievement. Those strategies ought to include high
standards, comprehensive statewide testing and reporting, and more
school choices. These strategies coupled with technology,
school-to-work, site-funding and decisionmaking, a system of ongoing
staff improvement, and others will improve the nation's schools.

Robert J. WedlCommissioner
Minnesota Department of Children, Families, and Learning
St. Paul, Minn.

Zero-Tolerance Laws Give False Comfort, No Discretion

To the Editor:

School codes that proclaim "zero tolerance" for weapons and
mandatory punishment for offenders may afford the false comfort that
total safety is assured, but all they really accomplish is the removal
of reasonable discretion from those who should be accountable for
providing a safe environment in the first place.

The result is often the travesty that leads a principal to suspend
an 8-year-old for innocently bringing a grandfather's pocketwatch,
festooned with a one-inch knife, to school. Rather than permitting the
principal to make a judgment and requiring him to defend that action,
some districts have chosen to administer a form of one-size-fits-all
justice that conveys the illusion of total fairness, toughness, and
safety, as you note in your article "Zero-Tolerance Laws Getting a Second
Look," March 26, 1997.

As a former superintendent, I routinely asked, when faced with a
child who had been apprehended while in possession of a weapon, the
weapon's size, whether it was brandished or hidden, the circumstances
that led to its discovery, and what the student's explanation for
having brought it to school had been. In virtually all cases, the
student was then suspended, but a box cutter or a knife is surely
different from the "weapon" displayed on a grandfather's pocketwatch.
And when non-weapons, such as a compass used in math class, turn out to
be dangerous in violent hands, even though not a cause for automatic
suspension, will the zero-tolerance advocates want to extend their list
of "weapons" still further?

The tension between what school administrators consider to be an
appropriate response to weapons possession and the position that some
offenders' advocates take is unfortunately what has led to the effort
to remove discretion from school authorities, who may feel intimidated
or wary lest their actions not be supported by their superiors or in
the courts. I recall a lawyer's argument in a brief supporting a
student who brought a loaded gun to my school and whom I had suspended
for a full year: My decision should be appealed, the lawyer wrote,
because the hammer on her client's gun would have to have been cocked
for the gun to have been fired. The fact that it wasn't constituted
prima facie evidence of lack of intent and thus the penalty was
excessive and unjust.

To the court's credit, the appeal was denied. What is important to
note, however, is that I had been authorized to exercise reasonable
judgment and defend my decision, which is what I thought we expected
professionals to do.

Announcing a zero-tolerance/mandatory-penalty policy may be
politically correct in some quarters and even popular, but this is not
how a safe school environment is created. Schools are complex small
societies, and students must be taught, and expected to demonstrate,
responsible behavior. Responsibilities must balance rights, and
misdeeds must be responded to with punishment.

Removing discretion from those whose actions should create the safe
atmosphere in which learning can flourish serves little purpose other
than to create a pretense which can harm some children through
Draconian measures without advancing the goal of the safe school.

Talent-Search Programs Misrepresented in Essay

To the Editor:

We write in response to Pamela Gale George's essay titled "The SAT and 'Talent Identification',"
Feb. 26, 1997. We will not attempt to address each of the numerous
errors and misconceptions contained in the piece, but instead describe
the talent-search philosophy and system in a way that should clear up
popular misunderstandings about this method.

Ms. George claims that by relying on a "single" SAT score,
university-based talent-search programs, such as the Duke University
Talent Identification Program, or TIP, provide educational
opportunities for "substantially" more boys than girls. She concludes
that such practices raise "troublesome" issues of validity and equity.
This claim is both misleading and incorrect.

Ms. George begins by questioning the use of the SAT as a tool for
"talent identification." Our rationale for using the SAT to identify
academic talent in 7th grade students is straightforward: For
exceptionally talented students, the usual grade-level tests of
achievement are too easy to allow these youngsters to display the full
extent of their talents. By using a test designed for older students--a
test with a higher "ceiling," in testing parlance--a more accurate and
complete picture of the student's abilities can emerge. This is a
perfectly valid practice. Indeed, 16 years of research at TIP have
documented in detail its usefulness. Ms. George's complaint that the
SAT was initially designed to predict first-year college grades is
irrelevant.

More troubling, however, is Ms. George's misrepresentation of TIP's
student participation. By focusing exclusively on SAT math scores, she
gives the impression that TIP participants are overwhelmingly male.
This is simply false.

The Talent Search is a two-tier process. In order to qualify for the
Talent Search, 7th grade students must first score at the 97th
percentile or above on any major portion of a school-administered
standardized test. All Talent Search participants, regardless of
whether they continue in our two-step process (and this year there were
over 70,000 in Duke's program alone) receive four years' worth of
educational materials (such as a noted guide to educational programs
and student-centered newsletters), program opportunities, and access to
resources. These materials supplement school offerings and offer a
motivational boost by putting students in touch with a community of
peers interested in learning. This system takes students from middle
school until they begin to consider the college-application process,
offering information and support to them and their parents along the
way.

The next step in the two-tier process requires that the student take
either the SAT or the ACT. In order to qualify for some additional TIP
programs (primarily summer residential programs), students must obtain
very high scores on either the SAT verbal test or the SAT math test.
Students may also qualify by obtaining high scores on one (or more) of
the four sections of the ACT. Ms. George simply misunderstands this
process and has erroneously stated that summer-program participation
requires high math scores of all students. She then erroneously
concludes that girls are disadvantaged by this practice. In fact, both
boys and girls may qualify for summer programs by obtaining high scores
on either the verbal or the math section of the test.

Use of a single math score would indeed be unfair to girls--but the
issue is moot because neither TIP, nor any of the other talent-search
programs, uses only a math score to identify students for summer
programs and other opportunities.

So are there in fact "substantially" more boys than girls who
participate in TIP programs, as Ms. George states? Since the first TIP
Talent Search in 1981, the percentage of boys identified each year has
been nearly identical to that of the girls (52 percent vs. 48 percent).
When these students take the SAT (or the ACT)--the second step in the
two-tier process--the gender gap is also small. Last summer, of the
1,728 students enrolled in TIP summer residential programs, 42 percent
were females. Of the students who qualified for the programs--a much
larger number, of course--45 percent were female. Equally important,
regardless of gender, students do extremely well in our summer courses;
there have been, in fact, no gender differences in either enrollment or
performance in tip math and science courses for a number of years. The
SAT is therefore as valid a measure of talent for boys as for
girls.

Ms. George would like us to use additional criteria to select our
students, such as school grades and teacher nominations. The reason we
don't is simple--for our purposes these criteria are less valid than is
the SAT. It is important to remember that we use the SAT to identify
exceptionally talented students. Very high scores on this test are
excellent indicators of talent and frequently identify students--of all
genders and backgrounds--whose talents were overlooked or misunderstood
by their teachers and even their families.

David GoldsteinExecutive Director

Vicki B. StockingAssistant Director for Research
Duke University Talent Identification Program
Durham, N.C.

Education School Defender Uses 'Straw Man Argument'

To the Editor:

Frank Murray's defense of the education-school-educated teacher as
superior to what he calls the "natural teacher" is the worst example of
straw man arguments that I have seen in a long time ("Ed Schools Are the Key to Reform," March
5, 1997). I have known education-school-educated teachers (including
those recently so educated) with the ideas and habits he attributes to
"natural teachers" and people (including teachers) who have never taken
an education course who exhibit the qualities he attributes to
"professional teachers."

The qualities of a good teacher (including deep learning in the
subjects he or she will teach, thoughtfulness about both what is to be
taught and those to whom it is to be taught, and respect for and
willingness to listen to students) do not come out of work on an
education degree. In fact, I know successful teachers (in community
colleges and private schools) who would like to teach in public schools
(and, in some cases, have been offered positions there, with the
proviso that they become "certified") who will not submit themselves to
an education school.

Paul RegnierWashington, D.C.

Michigan Teacher Doubts 'Rigor' of State Tests

To the Editor:

A few points should be added to your excellent article concerning
the large number of Birmingham, Mich., parents opting their high school
juniors out of the Michigan High School Proficiency Tests ("Just Saying No," April 9, 1997). The
governor and his people continue to defend the tests, maintaining that
the kind of rigor they impose will oblige schools to meet higher
academic standards. Regarding the communication arts sections of the
test, I can testify that "rigor" is not the right word.

Juniors who achieve proficiency in the writing tests must prove
their writing skills three times in a variety of writing tasks and time
periods. What these students have demonstrated is not so much an
ability to succeed in writing assignments that offer a legitimate
challenge as an ability to keep from being bored with an array of
writing assignments and to generate a purposefulness to these
assignments, when, in fact, little worthwhile purpose exists.

In most competitions, one's best score is the keeper, since it truly
reflects the level of achievement a person can attain. In the Michigan
Writing Assessment, a poor performance on one of the two lesser
assignments can nullify a good performance on the long, more demanding
assignment--the only one that can truly be called rigorous. Thus, in
the first year of the tests (the only one for which scores are
available) only 55 percent of the juniors at Birmingham's Seaholm High
School achieved proficiency on the 20-minute "Quickwrite" part of the
test. This number contaminated the 82 percent who succeeded on the
115-minute writing task.

The main question should not be why our students, most of whom are
demonstrably able writers (using college admissions as one criterion),
did poorly on Quickwrite. The real question is why this trivial writing
task, which in a sense is merely a prelude to the longer paper, rates
25 percent of the total score. This writing exercise is not rigorous or
tough; it's wrongheaded.

The hidden agenda for the first writing exercise, also worth 25
percent, is to promote writing across the curriculum. To take part in
it, the student writer must have at hand two papers, one written in an
English class and one written in a class other than English. The
assignment provides a context for reflecting on the praiseworthiness of
the two papers. This year the evaluators of the students' compositions
will not read the papers on which the student reflections are based. So
how valid is the evaluation of a composition that deals specifically
with material that the evaluator has not seen? This question takes on
special emphasis since in the writing part of the reading-proficiency
test students are penalized severely if they fail to mention and link
all three reading selections in their essays. One suspects that this
bean-counting mode of evaluation holds true in part one of the writing
test as well.

During the period of logistical nightmares in the week or so before
the tests, when parents were beginning to sign waivers, I wrote a
public letter to high school juniors, encouraging them to take the
test, lest too many top-level students opt out, thus skewing the
school's profile when the schoolwide results were published. Once the
trickle of waivers became a deluge, my point became moot. Schoolwide
scores for this year are meaningless in Birmingham.

The other points in your article--that the lengthy testing period
devours an unseemly amount of class time, that juniors in charter
schools and private schools need not take the tests, and that there is
little gain for the individual student who takes the test, whereas
risks exist for those who do--are all valid points.

Henry B. MaloneyHead, English Department
Seaholm High School
Birmingham, Mich.

Let National Tests Support, Not Displace, State Efforts

To the Editor:

The essay by Christopher T. Cross and Scott Joftus in support of
President Clinton's proposed national voluntary assessment makes some
important points ("Stumping for
Standards," April 9, 1997). It is important that high content and
performance standards are set in all schools in our country, that
teachers have incentives to see their students succeed on these
standards, and that parents be kept informed about how their children
are progressing in meeting these standards. While I agree with the
goals, I fear that the proposed means of achieving them--by having the
federal government pay for a "voluntary" testing program--will do
significant damage to efforts already under way.

One problem with the authors' reasoning is that it supposes
state-developed tests will be less challenging and state performance
standards lower than those associated with the federal effort. To
support this contention, they rely on a report by Mark Musick of the
Southern Regional Education Board based on data that now are about 2
years old.

That report noted that many states, particularly those throughout
the South, where it is common to require students to pass a state test
for promotion or graduation, had set low standards.

Over the past few years, however, many states have taken advantage
of Goals 2000 money to develop challenging content standards,
assessments, and performance standards. Arkansas, Kentucky, Maine, and
New Hampshire, for example, have all, independently, set approximately
equal standards--and, also of note, standards slightly higher than
those set for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Thus,
there already is under way a considerable effort by many states to
establish content and performance standards that Messrs. Cross and
Joftus would support.

States that have developed their own standards and assessments based
on those standards have produced them with considerable input from
teachers and other citizens within their states. They have done this in
part because they realize that local buy-in to the standards and
assessments is critical to their acceptance and, therefore, their
effectiveness in changing classroom behavior.

If a national assessment program is offered to states (especially if
it is initially offered at no cost), states will feel a need to use
it--probably abandoning or reducing their own assessments in the grades
and content areas included in the national tests. If pressure is put on
teachers to have their students perform well on the national tests, the
importance of the state frameworks will diminish, along with the
goodwill and support of local educators that states worked so hard to
achieve.

If it were necessary to trade that support to achieve the goals that
Mr. Cross and Mr. Joftus have posited, we then would need to debate the
relative benefits and costs of each approach. But that trade-off is not
necessary. All their goals can be met by testing a sample of students
in each state and then using that data to provide national norming
information on the statewide assessments.

That approach is already being tried in some states using the data
from the trial state assessment of the National Assessment of
Educational Progress. Indeed, the reason that Arkansas, Kentucky,
Maine, and New Hampshire know that their performance standards are
slightly higher than the NAEP standards is that they participated in
the trial state assessment and can use those data to address the
issue.

The only problems are the undependable schedule of the trial
assessment and the paucity of data it produces: To date, results have
been provided to states only for grade 4 reading and grades 4 and 8
mathematics. For a fraction of the $90 million it will cost to test all
students in grade 4 reading and grade 8 mathematics, the federal
government could offer states the opportunity to test a sample of their
students in several grades in both those content areas. States would
then have far better information about how their students were doing
relative to national norms and could use the information to make their
statewide assessment results far more meaningful to parents, who want
to know how their children are doing relative to national, not
statewide, norms.

Before we rush to implement the current proposal, we must consider
all the likely consequences, both good and bad. National testing that
supports existing statewide efforts, rather than displacing them, will
be the best way to promote educational achievement and ensure that
students meet high standards.

All Parents' Taxes Used For Public School Costs

To the Editor:

What Edd Doerr fails to mention in his letter supporting the claims
of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association about state spending on
transportation for private school students (Letters, April 9, 1997) is that parents
of children who attend nongovernment schools support the public schools
with their tax dollars. Busing children to the schools of their choice
seems a small price for districts to pay.

Mr. Doerr, the director of Americans for Religious Liberty, will do
anything in his power to ensure that Americans do not have religious
liberty when it comes to education. He does not want parents to have
any choice about where they send their children to school, and if they
stray from the government monopoly, he says, then tough luck, they'll
have to get there on their own.

During the past year, I have worked with the commissions and their
research arm, the National Study of School Evaluation. The NSSE has
developed a comprehensive set of research-based school-performance
indicators. For release in the fall, the indicators will help school
staffs identify their strengths and weaknesses and plan improvements to
raise student achievement. The indicators will reveal progress in
implementing proven practices and conditions that foster learning.

Although educators based past reforms on opinions, fads, and
unsubstantiated claims, the NSSE is building its indicators on
achievement research. It is, for example, collaborating with the
Alliance for Curriculum Reform, an organization of 30 education groups
with more than 2 million members, including teachers, subject-matter
specialists, administrators, and chief state school officers. The
alliance commissioned the Handbook on Improving Student
Achievement, a concise compilation of actionable research findings
from organization-sponsored works on six subject matters. Building on
this, the NSSE is working with the alliance and its member
organizations to further define effective practices in each content
area and to specify indicators of these practices. It is also involving
distinguished scholars to formulate indicators of progress in
administration, leadership, staff development, and other vital
areas.

Through my firsthand involvement in this project, I have seen the
commitment of the regional-commission leaders not only to hold schools
accountable but also to support their implementation of research-based
reforms. Though they would say much remains to do, these leaders and
their collaborators have taken significant steps to remedy our nation's
achievement problems.

The work of the NSSE and the regional commissions has extended to
over 28,000 elementary, middle, and secondary schools, and these groups
have considerable leverage to specify, encourage, and monitor needed
improvements requested by governors, Congress, business people,
parents, and others. Because of their current vision, credibility with
school people, and collaboration with other groups, the NSSE and the
commissions may be in a better position than any other organization to
take the lead in raising achievement. It is a pity that you did not
tell this part of the school-accrediting story.

Herbert J. WalbergProfessor of Education and Psychology
University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, Ill.

To the Editor:

It was a disappointment to read your article about accreditation.
What the article says is bad enough, since it doesn't reflect the
reality I have seen in the Western Association of Schools and Colleges'
sizable slice of the accreditation world and which I believe exists in
several other regions. But worse than the inaccuracy in the finished
product was the sense of a preordained outcome permeating your
information-gathering.

I was contacted at the beginning of this project. In response to
questions, I described our commission's "Focus on Learning" process,
which is an entire protocol centered around assessment data to drive
program improvement. I spent some time discussing how this process
differs from our previous version, which was less dependent on evidence
of student learning.

After this discussion, your reporter requested the opportunity to
accompany an accreditation team to a public school--but it appeared
that only schools using older, "bean counter" processes were desired
for the visit. I informed the reporter that this would not be possible
because, as of this year, the Focus on Learning process is required of
all California schools.

The article subsequently produced stated that "most" public schools
used accreditation protocols which are "superficial ... virtually
irrevocable ... focusing on a minimal checklist of equipment and
policies" and suggested that accrediting teams were inappropriately
chummy (and therefore easy to please) because "schools pay visiting
accreditors' tabs for hotels, meals, and travel expenses."

In fact, California public schools never pay traveling costs for
accrediting teams; those bills are paid from the WASC's general fund.
And I only wish that schools were always pleased with the evaluations
they receive from our teams. Perhaps the 15 percent of our schools
which were given probationary terms or denials last year would have
been more cheerful in their interactions with me. Not infrequently, I
hear that administrators are transferred, demoted, or even fired for
receiving a poor accreditation. I am sure those individuals would not
agree that they "don't have to fret about retaining accreditation."

The report was also in error, at least as concerns the WASC,
regarding the nature of accrediting commissions. Education Week
describes a panel of peers, possibly with too much sympathy for the
staffs of poorly performing schools. The WASC schools commission is
made up of educators from public, private, and religious schools,
parents and public representatives, college professors, and state
officials. Their patience with schools that do not take improvement
seriously is noticeably short; every year they override the
recommendations of some accrediting teams to reduce the terms of
schools which are falling short of the published standards. Our
commissioners are proud of the WASC flag and show no inclination to let
it fly over bad schools.

After reading this article, I am forced to believe that you showed
inexcusable bias and prejudgment in conscious avoidance of evidence
that your initial impression might not be generally accurate. We
counsel our accreditation teams to place their integrity above their
pride and abandon their findings if what they learn during the school
visit renders them incorrect. Should a journalist follow a lesser
standard?